The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear (speed reading book txt) 📕

The bombers didn’t come over like they did in the Blitz, like a swarm of big death-dealing insects blackening the sky, butthey still came and they still had it in for London, and all over the country. He sometimes read the papers while he was waitingfor a message, so he knew all about the other cities and towns that had copped it. He wondered if boys like him in Leeds andPortsmouth had to run through the night with envelopes tucked in their trousers. But he reckoned that if he kept running,he’d be all right: a moving target was harder to hit. It was stopping that scared him. It had been a warm couple of days,for October, but he didn’t want to slow down to take off his jacket in case his money dropped out. If he didn’t hand his earningsover to his father, he’d get the belt for his trouble.

He turned onto one street, then another on his way to the address on the envelope—he never had to look twice at an address—andat once the sky lit up again. Crump-crump-crump. That’s when he saw two men ahead, illuminated by a Bomber’s Moon and falling incendiaries. He didn’t like what he saw—there was shouting, and then the men were struggling, hanging onto each other, fighting, and he didn’t want to run into any trouble. This blimmin’ bombing was trouble enough. He slowed down, but felt a finger of fear, of warning, shimmy down his spine. A doorway offered refuge, but was he too close? Could they see him? Bloody hell, he might as well have asked for the lights to go on all over London. He flattened himself against the wall. If the house behind him hadn’t been a bombed-out shell, he would have knocked on the door and begged to be let in. He heard his heart beating in his ears and hoped that whatever was going to happen, happened soon—bombs he could tolerate, but people trying to kill each other when the Germans were trying to slaughter everyone in the blimmin’ country, well, no, he couldn’t understand that at all. People going for each other like that, it scared him something rotten.

Freddie crouched down in the doorway. One of the men appeared to have the upper hand now. He’d taken the other man and whiskedhim round, and had his neck in the crook of his elbow. Blimey, that bloke had big hands. Another flash of light and he saweverything, as if someone had turned up the gas lamp. The big bloke was wearing a raincoat, his dark hair swept back. If he’dhad a hat, he wasn’t wearing it now. More flashes and the man was illuminated again. Who was that film star he looked like?Freddie had gone to the pictures one Saturday morning, spending the bit extra Larkin had given him out of his own pocket.Old Larkin was a good sort—it was as if he knew what it was like for Freddie at home. Victor Mature! That was his name. LonChaney was in the picture too. It was called One Million B.C. But this bloke looked nastier than old Victor—and, blimey, that’s a scar.

More flashes of light, more crump-crump-crump as bombs fell. Freddie wanted to get moving, but was now paralyzed by the violence before him. The big man with the dark hair pulled out a knife—Freddie saw it glint in the flashes of light coming from the skies. And then it was done. He saw the man push the knife straight into the other man’s left side, then pull it out, and with a snarl across his face, he plunged the weapon into the man’s heart. It wasn’t like one of those pictures at the Gaumont. This poor sod went down with his eyes wide open, blood pouring from his mouth, and the murderer—oh dear God, he had just seen a real murder—pulled the knife out of the dead man’s body and wiped it across his chest. For a second, Freddie thought he saw two men standing over the body, but his eyes had gone all blurry, so he wiped the back of his hand across his face to stop himself seeing double and looked up again in time to see the man—the killer—calmly put the knife in his pocket. He looked about him, then he’d gone on his way. Just walked off, steady as you like, into the darkness.

The boy leaned over and vomited onto the dusty red tiles outside the remains of the door. And he’d wet himself. He felt hisbottom lip tremble and his hands were shaking. Oh Christ, I hope the envelope . . . but it was all right, it was dry. Not like his trousers.

Freddie Hackett sat for a while longer, trying not to sob. The envelope had to be delivered soon, or there would be trouble.But trouble would come when he got home and his father found out about the mess he’d made of his trousers. If he was lucky,Arthur Hackett wouldn’t be home when he got there. And perhaps they’d dry with the heat of his body. That’s what his mum saidwhen the washing hadn’t dried properly on the line out the back. “Never mind, love,” she’d say. “It’ll dry out with the heatof your body.” He sometimes wondered why she bothered at all, scrubbing the clothes and putting them through the wringer,only to see smuts from the trains all over them when she brought in the laundry.

Another minute, that’s all he’d need, and he’d be ready to start running again.

After a while the patch on his trousers didn’t feel so wet, so he emerged from the doorway. He jumped up and down to get his legs moving, as if he were letting a motor car idle in neutral so the oil could get around the engine before putting it into gear, and then he started running again, making sure